Last week I had the pleasure grabbing a coffee with Mindfulness Expert and Author Light Watkins. I had read his book Travel Light the week before, and he happens to often stay in my neighbourhood in Mexico City. We have become casual acquaintances after I recognised him one day while walking on the street and I introduced myself… and by introduce myself I mean clumsily approaching him (you would have second hand embarrassment for me if you had seen it!).
Fast forward to last week, and I told him I had read his book and he kindly offered to grab a coffee and sign the book for me.
I went into this coffee date wanting to ask lots of questions, but as we were chatting, Light asked me lots of questions about my life and my journey in Mexico City. Often when I tell this story I causally brush over the part where I say, …then we lost our home in an earthquake… only to be backed up a few steps with a, Wait? What? reply. So from there I unravelled the story and Light told me that it was one that was worth sharing. He also asked me what the biggest thing I took away from that experience was. So here is that story.
The Day We Lost Our Home
In June of 2017 I had moved into a new apartment in Mexico City, after spending several months living back with my parents, during a very messy separation, with my then three year old daughter.
Prior to moving I waited and saved until I could find somewhere in my ideal neighbourhood, that was easy walking distance from local parks and schools. I found it, and my landlord was a dream; the apartment itself was a bit dated but on one of the most desirable streets in the city, so landing it was a huge victory. Most importantly it was what felt like a fresh new entrance into living as a single-mom on my own terms.
Three months later the City suffered a massive earthquake, levelling more than 40 buildings and killing hundreds of people. I had been living in Mexico for around 7 years at this point and had experienced several smaller earthquakes before. The first time I remember going out to the street and seeing the ground moving beneath my feet. I commented how awesome it was – what a novel experience!
Two weeks before this particular earthquake, another had happened in the middle of the night and I ran to my daughter and held her, but chose not to go outside (as recommended) so that I didn’t wake her up, no pasa nada.
This time it was the middle of the day. I was alone in my apartment, my daughter was at school (thank God), and I had cancelled a meeting so that I could stay home and continue with some work and personal stuff without any interruptions. When the building started shaking, it took split seconds to attempt to look for my keys, hear a plate crash in the distance, feel the building almost thumping up and down while swaying aggressively, and decide to forget the keys and get out the door. As I did so another girl came out of the apartment opposite, clearly more panicked than I was. I led her down 4 flights of stairs, all the while she was hysterically crying as I held her hand behind me. We were about to walk out of the glass fronted lobby door, doorknob in hand, when the building collapsed on top of us. If we had been seconds faster and made it outside we would have been crushed. I have no idea what she was thinking but for some reason my brain didn’t register what had actually happened.
We didn’t scream, just lost our breath a moment and waited for the falling to stop. It was pitch black, dust everywhere. The only thing I had in my hand was my phone with which I feebly attempted to put the torch on, but the dust was so thick the light couldn’t penetrate it. Maybe a few more minutes passed when I suddenly remembered that on the other side of the lobby there was a door leading out to the car park. I mumbled something to my earthquake buddy in broken Spanish and we both bent and crawled our way through to the car park. Luckily the ground floor structure had not collapsed and we were able to make our way to the double sized gates where people were already gathering. We helplessly called out and 3 or 4 men managed to pry the car park gate open. We ran out to freedom, only to be confronted with the full scale of the devastation. I looked up at what was left of the building in total disbelief. Everything obliterated in a mountain of concrete mess.
That moment of processing was rudely interrupted by the sudden memory that my daughter was at school about 7 blocks away and her building may have collapsed too. I ran, hard. It was obvious that people were not aware that buildings had collapsed as I ran through the streets. There was no panic, just the usual, go to the street, look up, check your phone, wait around. (It was only later the full scale of everything was realised). I found my daughter and her classmates at school, totally fine and smiling. By contrast I was covered in dust, saying some nonsense to the teachers about the building collapsing and they told me to go and do what I needed to do so I didn’t upset her.
I Facetimed my estranged spouse, who was weirdly composed about the whole thing. Ouch. Next I called my parents throwing them into a tale-spin, and moments later the wifi and cell service went down for several hours.
Less than an hour after the event everybody and their dog had formed lines to clear the rubble, pass water, do whatever they could to try and rescue survivors from the concrete piles. For the first time, maybe ever, I had no idea how to be helpful. Not even to myself.
I returned to the school to pick up my daughter at 6:30pm that evening. The amazing teachers had stayed with her, meanwhile I was wandering around with a colleague who found me (saved me from a near nervous breakdown in fact), having no clue what to do.
The rescue efforts took weeks. The parts of the city that suffered the most damage, including our neighbourhood, were like war zones. 4 people from our building died.
6 months before this I discovered the Law of Attraction.
What manifested in my life was no less than an earthquake that took down everything I owned with it.
Lesson 1 - People Will Help
The most notable part of this experience was the amount of help we received. The small group of family and friends that I knew in Mexico City immediately came to our aid, bringing clothes, toiletries and cash. We stayed in a hotel for a few days (that overcharged wildly) and people came daily with packages of goods. Meanwhile friends and family in the UK, even friends that I hadn’t seen since school, were donating money and checking-in. Honestly it was totally overwhelming to become an overnight charity case. I didn’t know how to thank people and there was sudden burden of responsibility to be as grateful and humble as possible since we were receiving so much help.
People also offered us their homes to stay in and I took up 2 of those offers where my daughter Roma and I stayed for the next month. Roma was used to having a bath every night and I have one vivid memory of an apartment we stayed in that was kindly given to us for as long as we needed by a casual friend. There was no bath so I found a large plastic storage container and filled it up so Roma could take a bath. Just looking at her so vulnerable in that moment was so painful. The stuff we lost didn’t really matter, but seeing her safety taken away broke my heart. I took a picture of the moment and then cried and cried.
I had absolutely no idea what was going to come next. My business was barely off the ground so I didn’t even have a steady income to rely on.
The help we received and people’s willingness to inconvenience themselves for us, even though they were also suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake, was a level of support I’ll never forget. I learned that more people care than you think, people want to help, and most importantly it’s ok to accept it without the expectation of reciprocating it.
After a couple of months of getting our feet steadied I started looking for a new place. We saw several places that had guys literally patching up the walls when we went to view them. Hard pass, thanks!
However one realtor who was showing us around suddenly remembered a place that had just come on the market and took us there. It was perfect, slightly above my budget, but perfect none the less. We moved in within a couple of weeks and once again friends, family and many strangers sprang to our rescue with free furniture and household items that allowed us to make a home again. Thanks to the money donations I was also able to buy some brand new Zara bedding too which is the first time I had ever bought new bedding in my life! I had a mattress on the floor for quite some time, but we made it.
Lesson 2 - Things have to collapse sometimes for life to astonish you.
We still live in that same apartment now and life got exponentially better over the years that followed.
My business grew.
Shortly after the earthquake I made a proper break from my ex (which was in large part due to his behaviour while we were in the crisis).
Our friendships and community in the city deepened.
Life was and is significantly better.
At the beginning I mentioned that a mere few months before this happened I had discovered teaching about the Law of Attraction. The whole thing resonated with me instantly and I immediately put it into practice. Before moving back to Mexico City I worked hard at visualizing a new laptop - I didn’t have one at the time and it was pretty essential - it manifested about a month later. This was my first and most memorable attempt at deliberately manifesting something. (Incidentally it was lost in the earthquake!) I also manifested the street I wanted to live on and a few other details related to that move.
I was also at that time working on getting my husband back. I visualized us living together again and him surprising us.
But then, with the earthquake, all that was taken away in an instant. The laptop, the house, the ex, along with all the rest of our belongings. As devastating and traumatic as that period in time was, there was one key element that I was holding onto that wasn’t meant for me, which was the relationship. I had such strong convictions that we were meant to be together that nothing would have swayed me. So guess what? The universe stepped in and adjusted the course with nothing short of the total collapse of my life.
The plot twist is that with all the loss came a surge of better and better - I was given a new laptop, the new apartment was better, and I was finally able to let go of my husband and in hindsight see how unhealthy the relationship was. It was absolutely nothing I could have planned or foretold for myself, nor would have wished it upon myself. But if you are at all familiar with manifesting you’ll be well acquainted with the mantra, focus on the what and not on the how. If you try and figure out the how you’ll be limited by your narrow notions of the ways that things can come about, and you leave absolutely no space for the miracles.
So I suppose the lesson is that even when everything falls apart in such dramatic fashion, the loss can be grieved, but it’s likely, no… guaranteed, that the collapse is the universe’s way of cutting the cord with something you can’t or won’t let go of, and/or making space for the birth of something new. Such events also make you completely present with your moment, as hard as they are, you have to BE there. When you are being you are not doing. The universe then has space to work the miracles that you have really been asking for because you are not drowning out it’s presence with your own mental noise and narratives. It can be better than you even imagined it to be.
While you don’t have to wait for traumatic events to allow synchronicity, serendipity or miracles into your life - emotional surrender, trust and faith can have equally powerful effects - when a physical or emotional collapse does occur, you can have utter conviction that it’s for you, serving you and the other side will absolutely astonish you. Trust the dots, no matter how ugly they may be.